Unstable line question

Hi. Hopefully someone can help me understand this better. I've been having an issue with disconnections. Sometimes I can go 6 hours with none, then I'll get about 92 in the space of 2 hours. I've been told that my line is just unstable due to the distance from the exchange (fibre but 1.5 miles of copper wiring to travel). My question is this: Is it normal that this has only now become a problem? After 5 years or so of relatively stable connection? The house behind mine (further from the exchange) is supplied by the same pole, yet that connection is stable. I've mentioned it to a couple of engineers but they haven't given me a reason as to why there would be a difference?

Can you glean any stats from the router ?

I recorded some of the stats in a table to see if I can make out a pattern but I don't really understand them if I'm honest. I wanted something concrete to show an engineer too. I've got a ton of screenshots of the router stats at various times but they never seem interested.

Stats table

If you have errors etc can you post including WAN uptime. It is best if you can post up all the stats.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 04-Feb-18 16:44:07)

Like this(?):

Router stats screenshot

That's just a snapshot of what the connection is currently. As you can see, it's been connected for over an hour. The rates bounce around a lot.
I don't really get errors in the stats. Just drops. DSL Down, DSL Up. There are a lot of '[DoS attack: ACK Scan]' mentions in my logs though. Probably not for this forum but BT don't seem interested in my router as it's a Netgear. I've tried a TP-Link Archer though and I get the same drops so I don't think that's it.

What estimates are here?
https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s...

Depending on your ISP might need to use address finder.
Post non fibre too.

In reply to a post by agentsquirrels:

Stats table

Your line has a major high resistance fault on it. The line attenuation is moving around crazily, it shouldn't really move at all, at most a few 10ths of a dB between resyncs (unless a new SNRM band is picked up on resync e.g. D1 to D1 and D2). If you haven't connected the router to the test socket, try doing so and leave it be for a few days. If similar issues occur, report a telephony fault to your ISP (I presume the line is noisy?)

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Feb-18 18:26:23)

Thanks for all the replies!

I've been connected to the test socket since early November, which is right after this fault started. I looked around online to see all the things I could check at my end so I got a new filter and plugged into the test socket. It hasn't made any difference, and there is a crackle on the line at times. Someone actually came out about the crackle in December. He was the only one to detect a fault, but he wasn't a broadband engineer, just a telephone engineer so he completely ignored me when I started mentioning my router and then told me he had no interest in computers! The 5th engineer will be out on Tuesday, and once again it will feel like I'm the mental one for saying theres a problem.

I actually found some old stats from my TP Link Archer as well:

432 2017-11-24 19:50:40 SYSTEM Notice DSL link up
431 2017-11-24 19:50:33 SYSTEM Notice DSL training G.993 started
430 2017-11-24 19:50:22 SYSTEM Notice DSL training G.994
429 2017-11-24 19:50:08 SYSTEM Notice DSL training G.994
428 2017-11-24 19:50:03 SYSTEM Notice DSL training G.994
427 2017-11-24 19:49:59 SYSTEM Notice DSL link down
426 2017-11-24 19:49:38 SYSTEM Notice DSL link up
425 2017-11-24 19:49:30 SYSTEM Notice DSL training G.993 started


Line Status:
DSL Modulation Type:
Annex Type:
Upstream Downstream
Current Rate(kbps) 965 6955
Max Rate(kbps) 1066 7292
SNR Margin(dB) 6.6 6.9
Line Attenuation(dB) 102.3 37.1
Errors(pkts) 41810 61782

That's from late November.

The BT Wholesale checker is another stumper. These are my accurate numbers (sorry I didn't take a screenshot at the time so it's a bit unformatted) :


VDSL Range A (Clean) 9 4.7 1.2 0.8 3.4 Available -- -- Yes --
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 7.1 2 1.1 0.5 1.8 Available -- -- Yes --
FTTP on Demand 330 30 -- Available -- -- -- --
ADSL Max Up to 3.5 -- 2.5 to 6.5 Available -- -- -- --
Fixed Rate 1 -- -- Available -- -- -- --
VDSL Multicast -- -- -- Available -- -- -- --
Bridge Tap N
VRI N
NTEFaceplate N
Last Test Date 16-05-2017


And these are what it has been showing for the past 2 months:

BT Wholesale results

At this point I don't even know what to say to BT. I'm pretty sure there's a line fault, but they keep telling me everything's fine, it's just the way the line is, even though it never was like this before. Another interesting aspect to this is that my brother's awful connection (i.e. the person in the house behind ours whose connection is now solid) was fixed right around the time ours went to hell. It could just be a coincidence, but none of the engineers have looked at the pole that connects both our houses, and none of them have responded when I've pointed out the disparity between the two connections.

Wow, that's some change in line estimates. Just to confirm, the line estimates have increased or decreased? I don't think I've ever seen estimates increase/decrease that much before, seems like the database is broken.

I'm unsure why the engineers are tossing you off like this, you have a significant line fault that needs fixing. Line length is totally irrelevant, whether a line is a few hundred meters long or several miles long, it should be stable, not dropping out as frequently as you're experiencing.

It may be worth contacting your ISP's CEO or even better the Openreach CEO to get this sorted, as that should allow a higher skilled engineer to visit your premises and hopefully fix the problem for good.

Good luck!

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Feb-18 19:10:05)

What real speed does your brother get? Around 9Mbps or well over 50Mbps? That should tell us which estimate figure is correct.